


Three Ten-day and Close quarters

by commander_hot_pants



Category: Valor Series - Tanya Huff
Genre: Alamber being a perfect little shit, Attempted Seduction, Canon Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 12:50:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9272552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commander_hot_pants/pseuds/commander_hot_pants
Summary: While waiting for the Promise's retrofits to be completed, Craig has no choice but get to know their new di'Taykan crew member.





	

 Craig brushed his fingers along the plastic frame surrounding the environmental controls, breathing a sigh of relief when it didn’t touch back.

"Lighting in here is shit." Alamber had already spread himself over the smaller bunk and had a compact mirror open, inspecting his make up,

"I'm sure you'll survive." Craig sat down on the other bunk, his weight bowing the cot beneath him as he settled. It had been fourteen hours since Torin boarded a shuttle towards Paradise, spending the spare time with her family while Craig oversaw the Promise's retrofits. Binti, Ressk and Werst had done the same but Alamber didn't have family to spend time with so he'd stayed with Craig. He wasn’t sure what was in their future, but he knew it would involve a lot more bodies on his ship. A new O2 scrubber was priority number one, a private bunk room for himself and Torin a close second.

"That scrubbers over kill, you know." Alamber said. "It's twice the size we need."

"Yeah, well, I'd rather too much oxygen…" He threw an arm over his face and sighed, exhaustion hitting him like a brick. "I'm gonna hunker down. Long day."

"Oh," He glanced over at Alamber, seeing him tugging at the blanket corners, fingers fidgeting, "Alright."

"You don’t have to turn the lights off," Craig said as he slid under the blankets, "but just, keep it down." Ship noises he'd gotten used to sleeping with, but voices, fidgeting and movement he hadn’t. Having a roommate who hasn’t Torin was going to be interesting. Alamber's hair pulsed a few times before he turned his light eyes towards Craig.

"Hey Ryder, you wanna fuk me before bed?"

Craig scoffed out a laugh, "Nah, I'm good."

"Maybe I'll go out and find someone then…"

"Alright, just don’t bring them back here." Alamber grunted a noncommittal noise, but made no move to leave the room and instead turned off the rooms lights.

"You think Werst likes me? Ressk doesn’t like me." Alamber said blatantly. "Those two seem to agree on a lot, think they're fukking? It's so hard to tell with Krai sometimes."

"I don’t know, mate." Sleep was tugging his eyelids down, the days stress pulling him into sleep faster than usual.

"I like Torin." Alamber said suddenly. "She's hot and dangerous."

A laugh snuck through with his next breath, "I agree with you there."

"I like Binti too," judging by the amount of time the two had spent sharing a bunk the feeling was mutual, "how long until they come back?"

"We'll let them know when the retrofits are coming to a close," He half mumbled, "everyone will head back then."

"Yeah, I know but how _long._ " Craig sighed and pulled the blanket as close to his face as he could.

"I don’t know, probably three ten-day?" Alamber huffed out some air and he could just imagine the pulsing of his hair. He closed his eyes and rolled onto his other side, grateful sleep was finally within his fingertips.

Only half a moment after he'd fallen asleep the sound of Alamber getting out of bed awoke him. Craig made an unflattering noise and turned towards the room, squinting until the general shape of Alambers tall body came into focus, "What, what is it?"

"Your accent gets really hard to understand when you're tired, you know that?" Craig blinked a few times and dug the heel of his hand into his eye.

"Yeah, ok. Do you need something?" There were several minutes of silence before Craig's brain started processing correctly. "You wanna sleep here don’t you?"  The silence continued and he could hear the wet taps of Alamber's bare feet as he shifted.

"Can I?" Craig just grunted and moved to the very edge of the bed. Di'Taykans didn’t sleep alone if they could help it and from the bits and pieces Alamber had revealed about his past it sounded like he hadn't been able to help it more often than most. His ex-vantru had forced him into isolation frequently while she was alive and his guilt over betraying her memory still occasionally left him alone.

Instead of a warm body crawling over him, heavy blankets dropped onto him, "The hell is that?"

Alamber shifted the mass onto Craig and crawled under them, "Blankets."

"How many?"

"Three."

"The hell do you need three for?"

"Its cold in space." Alamber said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world as he stretched the three blankets over him and Craig.

"We're on a heated station!" His protests were ignored as Alamber settled against him, within seconds Craig found himself in a sauna of a bed with a face buried into the crook of his neck. "I thought di'taykans hated being overheated."

"Maybe some of us." He murmured against his damp skin as a wrist brushed against his hip.

"Fuk," Craig sighed, "could you at least turn your masker up?"

"It's at seven already." In the lowlight, Craig could just make out the shapes at his throat well enough to fiddle the dial all the way to the left.

"Now it's at maximum." Alamber chuckled a little too loud and pulled himself closer to Craig. It only took him about a minute to realize why Alamber had chuckled so enthusiastically. "I turned it off did I?" He laughed again, shifting his body so it was partially on top of Craig's. A wet hot tongue ran over his collarbone and up his neck to his ear and Craig knew he had literally seconds to deal with it. "If you don’t turn that bloody thing back on right now you're sleeping alone from here on out."

"Come on, Ryder," Alamber purred into his ear, "if you close your eyes I bet you can't tell the difference between my mouth and the bosses." He had practically draped himself over Craig's body and there was nothing he could do to stop his body from reacting. "You can be rough as you want, I don’t have a gag reflex."

"Fukking," He growled, shoving Alamber off of him, every inch of his resistance working overtime to keep from pinning him down and testing that statement, "that’s enough." With his eyes closed it took him several gropes to get his fingers on the masker, pushing it in the complete opposite direction. "This stays on maximum." After a few minutes his head was still spinning with pheromones but at least it was just lingering and not fresh. "God damn it."

"You can do anything you want to me," Alamber's fingers knit tightly into the front of his shirt, "hold me down, force me, hurt me, _anything._ Fuk, you don’t even have to get me off." _Just use me._ He didn’t say it but Craig heard it loud and clear. _Prove that I'm useful to you._

He pushed him again, keeping him at full arm's length. "Kid, hey," He took a deep breath and with the space between them his brain started working again, "you wanna sleep here, that’s fine. Happy to have you, but we're not having sex," after a moment he decided he needed to be more specific, "and I don’t want to hurt you."

"I'm good at it." Alamber's voice was quiet, desperate. "I'm _really_ good at it. It's easy-"

"No." He weakened his grip on him and allowed him to move closer, body having never reacted to his own proposals. Di'taykan lips were always soft and, for some reason, always tasted vaguely of mint and Alamber's were no different. He kissed much slower than Craig had expected, not pushy or heated, more of a family kiss than anything.

"I am good at it." He murmured with their lips still touching. Craig gave one more kiss to Alamber before rolling him to the side of his body and pulling the blankets over them.

"I'm sure you are," Craig pulled him into the hollow of his body and wrapped his arms around him tightly, "let's get some sleep."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, it was my first time writing fic for Valor and I'm nervous about my characterization. If you're a fan of the series feel free to drop me a line, contact info is in my profile~


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